Following the fail – a big win!

Although I was feeling down about the failed batch and not having 3 beers on tap for the guests, we had some people over a weekend ago for beer and bbq.  The two beers on tap, the Vienna lager and the oatmeal stout were really big hits.  Comments like "”one of my favorite stouts” and “I love you Pat” were common and making me feel very good.  The barbeque was also awesome so a very successful night all the way around. 

A new crew headed to the house this weekend so hopefully I get the same response!

____________________________________________________

“An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools” – Ernest Hemmingway

First epic failure

Well not everyone is perfect, and I have demonstrated that in spades.  In my attempt to please my wife and make a batch of beer specifically for her the yeast did not want to cooperate.  I used liquid yeast for the first time in a “smack pack” and was struggling from the beginning.  I hit the pack up and down and it took about 6 days to expand to the usable size.  The actual fermentation went well, and while the OG was a little lower that what was expected, it was not a problem.  I added the yeast and let that baby go. 

The transfer to the carboy and the secondary fermentation also went off without a hitch and everything was looking good.  After a couple of weeks I took a gravity reading and had to do a double take.  I let is go a week or so more, took another reading and was still confused.  The “beer” was about 1.4% alcohol…I put it into a keg hoping that something good might happen, but this is just a wasted batch. 

A couple days ago I brewed another witbeer hoping for redemption.  This morning I checked it and am somewhat concerned as the bubbles are few and far between.  I am hoping a few more days will get that yeast going and I can add another batch to the kegerator!

__________________________________________________________

“The government will fall that raises the price of beer” – Czech Saying

Tap #3 of 4

Time for the next beer to go on tap!!  About 3 weeks ago I moved the Belgian Wit into the secondary fermenter and am now ready to move to the keg.  My plan is to add about half of the priming sugar and force carbonate with about half the pressure that is shown on all the carbonation charts.  This was also my first pure extract brew, and I have to say, the wort production part of the process went very well.  I did not have any problems and would recommend extract brewing going forward. 

Using the kegs is still a work in process, but the two that are on tap are still coming through and tasting fine, so I am a happy man!  Should have an update and pictures in about a week of all 3 beer that will be on tap.  Until then, happy drinking!

______________________________________________________

“I drink to make other people interesting” – George Jean Nathan

ITS ALIVE!!!

After many trips to Lowes and Home Depot, boxes upon boxes being delivered, returned, and redelivered to the house, and actually brewing the beer, the kegerator is finally complete!  Par for the course however, turning on the freezer would not go as smoothly as it probably should have….

I finally received my refurbished kegs in the mail and with a batch hanging out in a keg already and another in the carboy I was ready to get rolling.  I took a good amount of time cleaning the “new” kegs to remove whatever the hell had been in there before, sanitized a few times, and then ran the solution through all the kegerator tubing to make sure everything was good and clean.  I moved my lager from the older keg it was sitting in to a freshly sanitized one, pressurized, and threw it into the freezer.  Next up was the oatmeal stout which followed the same process but from the carboy.  At this point things are looking good and it’s time to turn on the freezer and get me some cold beer!  I plugged in the freezer and temperature monitor, grabbed a celebratory beer from the fridge, and went to bed. 

The next day after getting home from work I went to check on my baby and was hit with a blast of cold air that felt a lot colder than 40 F.  After a quick analysis of the situation I could see the light bulb appear above my head as I realized that just because the freezer and the temperature controller are plugged in, they will not work together if they are not plugged into EACHOTHER!  So now with lines frozen full of beer/sanitization liquid, and two kegs of frozen beer I started to get concerned.  I turned off the freezer, took the kegs out to them them come back up to temp and had a beer to help me wallow in my many mistakes.

Over the next few days everything came back to normal and the kreezer is working perfectly.  The only problem is that I am having a lot of trouble carbonating the beer.  Weeks prior I had put the priming sugar into the keg with the lager and was under the impression that should take care of the carbonation.  I think because it was not kept cold during this time the priming sugar could not really do its job.  With the stout I had a small mishap with the priming sugar and was only able to add about 1/4 of the bag.  Knowing this I used the following chart http://www.kegerators.com/carbonation-table.php to determine what PSI I should set these two beer at, continued to move them around so the beer was fully saturated with CO2, and set them to sit for a few days. 

Yesterday I grew impatient of waiting and poured a sample of each beer.  They were both carbonated and free flowing from the kegs!!  The lager was surprisingly good with a little more hoppiness than I expected.  The stout was a little sweeter than I typically like with some hits of chocolate, but overall a good beer.  To fill up the rest of the spots we have a Belgian Wit and an Octoberfest in the works.  More on those to come, but for how its time to celebrate the completed project!!

____________________________________________________________

“Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza.” – Dave Barry

Saturday Brewing

With a free weekend and nothing more I can do on the kegerator until more packages arrive next week I decided to bottle up the lager that I have in secondary fermentation and brew up an oatmeal stout.  I went with the bottling first to which end I sanitized everything in site, cleaned out the keg a couple of times and put in the beer.  As this was my first time using a keg I read later that I probably should of done some more extensive sanitizing including sending some of the solution through all the tubes and valves, but I plan on remedying that by cleaning all of that equipment on another keg before attaching to the one with the beer.  We will see how it works!

The oatmeal stout was next.  As I have said, I am not an incredibly experienced brewer, and have only used the ingredient kits up to this point.  This is the first one where I had to do a little more extensive mashing and actually steep the grains for about 45/50 minutes to convert some of the starches to sugars.  Because temperature was more important than other batches I made I took some wood shims and a small clamp and attached my thermometer to the side of the brew pot without it touching the sides.  This allowed me to keep a very good eye on the temp for the 45 minutes with an attempt to keep it between 160 and 162 F.   I think this went pretty well and I ended up with a very nice looking wort.  After that the steps are pretty straight forward and I added the malt, then hops, and with only one over boil got through the hour boil.  

Cooling the wort continues to be my biggest challenge as I do not own a wort cooler and it seems to take FOREVER to reduce a boiling liquid down to 70 F.  I think part of the problem is my brew pot being too think and really holding the heat in more than some other pots.  My attempt this time was to first cool the pot in a sink full of ice water, then put it down in the lager fridge so continue to cool.  This worked pretty well and after a while I was at the right temp so I moved the wort to the fermenter, added the yeast and threw the top on. 

On Tuesday I checked my progress and things are going okay.  I noticed that there were not many bubbles coming out of the air lock, and unfortunately the seal is not fully on.  I had to go to work, but plan on replacing the lid when I get home.  Hopefully the oxygen that will get into the beer during the switch will not harm the beer, but I think that a one time exposure will be better than continuous exposure through this seal gap.  Always an adventure!!

_______________________________________________________

“I fear the man who drinks water and so remembers this morning what the rest of us said last night” – Ancient Greek proverb

Kegerator Days 4 – A Tuesday

The rest of my goodies arrived in the mail on Tuesday and when I got home from work I went directly into the basement to put together what I could.  In my handful of packages was the 4 way CO2 distributor which I attached to the inside of the collar above where the CO2 canister will sit and attached all of the CO2 lines.  I also used larger conduit clamps to keep all of the lines in place along the sides of the freezer. 

At this point I believe I am pretty much ready to start using this bad boy.  All I need to do is procure some corny kegs and turn the freezer on.  Along those lines I also received and “installed” (hung on the outside of the freezer) the temperature controller which will hang on the inside of the freezer when it is on and keep us in the correct temp range.  I am waiting for final installation of this until after I have all of the kegs in place so I can be sure the placement will not be touching any of them.  I am also waiting on the kegs to cut the beer and CO2 lines to the proper size so I can eliminate extra tubing and keep everything as clean as possible. 

So until I find the cheapest place to get some kegs, and finish some beer to put in them I am in a holding pattern waiting on the tap handle thread insert and kegs so I can finish everything up and get to drinking!!

________________________________________________________

“The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind”  - Humphrey Bogart

Kegerator Day 4 – A Monday

After taking the weekend off to visit family and friends at "the cabin" we got back Sunday night to 2 of the 3 boxes I was expecting.  With almost everything in place I figured I could at least finish off the taps, put the lid on, and organize all the lines.  After a quick stop at Home Depot on my way home to pick up some conduit clamps to hold the tubing in place along the sides of the freezer, and a rubber mat ($20 for black rather than terra cotta) for the bottom.   When I got home I started in on the taps by first installing the newly arrived faucets and shanks.  Even though it was an easy way to start my confidence was high as I moved on to putting together the tap handles.  I found the correct size drill bit and in the center of each chalkboard made myself a nice little pilot hole.  Each chalkboard went onto the handle straight and look great!  I am pumped and ready to put these guys on. 

If you remember from the previous post, Jackie and I ran into a few issues when we had to glue some nuts together in order to screw the tap handles into the faucets.  These were put to the test and utterly failed…The nuts in the two that were glued on with gorilla glue simply would not screw on, and the ones without gorilla glue came completely out of the handle.  While disappointed I was not surprised and already had another solution in mind.  When looking through a Williams brewing catalog that came with my drip tray I found the piece that I actually should of bought from the very start.  A tap handle thread insert, which according to the site, will allow me to “Turn almost anything made out of wood into a tap handle!”  This is of course what I am trying to do, so later that night I made my purchase, along with some beer ingredients, and will pick this project up later in the week. 

Thankfully there was still more to do so day 4 was not a complete failure.  I managed to successfully attach the freezer lid with very little trouble and then moved on to gluing the conduit clamps to the sides so I can run my lines in a nice orderly way.  This also went very well and now that Jackie was home we took on the final project, gluing small but surprisingly powerful magnets to the back of the drip tray.  With only a few broken magnets from them flying at one another we managed to get almost all 50 glued on.  They, along with the conduit clamps are drying and we will pick this up tomorrow. 

Pictures of the magnets glued onto the drip tray, the installed taps minus the handles, and a complete handle waiting for a thread insert.

  

____________________________________________________________

“When we drink, we get drunk. When we get drunk, we fall asleep. When we fall asleep, we commit no sin. When we commit no sin, we go to heaven. Sooooo, let's all get drunk and go to heaven!” – Brian O’Rourke

Kegerator Day 3 – A Monday

Before work I sprayed the tap handles with polyurethane so they could have a chance to dry and we could put these guys together after work. That part of the plan went very well, and then we got home and started putting them together…

There were a number of steps that had to be completed in order to put the tap handles together. We started with gluing in the nuts to the hole I drilled yesterday in the bottom of the handle. This needed to be very secure as if the nuts move in a circle when I am screwing them onto the tap the project will not work. With this in mind we reached again for the gorilla glue. Jackie put a small amount in the bottom of the hole and we pushed in the nuts. At the same time we decided to use the gorilla glue to secure the chalkboards to the 1x6’s. With these weighed down and the tap handles resting, we went upstairs for dinner.

After dinner we came back down to a small mess. The gorilla glue in the tap handles expanded, as it is made to do, and was flowing out the top of the hole and onto the bottom of the tap handle. In addition, the glue had expanded under the chalkboards and ended up flowing out the sides onto the boarder of the 1x6. So instead of finishing these up, we starting scraping half cured gorilla glue off the sides of the chalkboards and tap handles. By then end of the night we with some elbow grease and a can of paint thinner we had everything looking good and hopefully usable. Jackie put on the last coat of chalkboard paint and we decided to stop before we messed anything else up!

A picture of the bolts put in with the correct glue.  Lets hope they hold!!

_____________________________________________________
"When I read about the evils of drinking I gave up reading" - Henny Youngman

Kegerator Day 2 – A Sunday

 

I am by myself for day 2, and most of the projects are, or should be, one person jobs. After a lot of internet searching we have determined that the tap handles we want are just to darn expensive and that of course we can make them....Here is the link for what were will be going for.     Tap Handles

Back from day 2 shopping trip #1 (time on receipt 1:20 pm) with a bag full of old school table legs, and various screws, bolts and nuts and chalkboard paint. After a quick analysis of the table legs it was clear that “one of these things is not like the other”, so back in the car I go.

Back from trip #2 (time on receipt 2:19 pm) with 4 more table legs and some other screws and stuff that I think might be useful in attaching a table leg to a beer tap, and another piece of wood to the top of a table leg. I was so wrong it was not even funny. My first thought on how to complete these taps was to put insert nuts into both the top of the tap handle and the piece of wood with the chalkboard. This turned out to be a complete failure because the only way I could get the tap screws in was to screw them in with pliers which completely pinched the sides not allowing anything to be screwed into them. It was time for a change of strategy and another trip to the store.

Back from trip #3 (time on receipt 4:40 pm) with new table legs and bolts.  My new strategy is to cut a hole with my new awesome drill bit, glue nuts into the hole that I create, and the use those nuts to screw onto the tap. Problem one that I encounter is that I need 2 nuts to fill the hole, so I gorilla glued two of them together and speed bump 1 was overcome. At this point I am waiting on my wife to get back from a baby shower and take some time to move my lager to the secondary fermenter.

Now the time has come to cut our chalkboard toppers so I get the guidance from the wife and go to it. This went really well, and without any mistakes ended up with 3.5 x 3.5 1x6’s and 3x3 pieces of balsa wood for the chalkboards. All we could do for the rest of the day was stain everything, paint the chalkboards and rest up for the work week and day 3.

Pictures of the semi-finished chalkboards and tap handles.  The screw on top of the handle is double sided and will hopefully hold the chalkboard top when all is said and done.

___________________________________________________
"Fermentation may have been a greater discovery than fire" - David Rains Wallace

Kegerator Day 1 – A Saturday

 

On Thursday we stopped in to get the next round of beer supplies from How Do You Brew, on Friday we researched, on Saturday I went shopping! Jackie did a lot of the initial research including what would be the best size freezer to buy, and where we could get one. We ended up deciding between a 7, 9 or 10 cubic foot freezer, and when it was all said and done, got the 9. This will easily hold 4 corney kegs and the CO2 container, which, while not the largest option, was the best for our current house, and in reality, the biggest one that would fit down the stairs to the basement! Here is a pic of the one we ended up with.

In addition to the freezer, day one shopping trip number 1 (time on receipt – 11:27 am) also included a variety of items at Lowes such as hose clamps, silicon, casters, and a few other random items. I have detailed all my spending and where I was able to purchase everything in case anyone out there needs some references, and I will post that once we are all finished.  I am also trying to provided links so if you need something specific you can find it by clicking on the name. 

Once I got home and Steve stopped by with the beer and we were ready to start building. Our first task was to build the collar that would go around the top of the freezer. This allows us to have the faucets and shank go through the wood, avoiding the almost guaranteed outcome of me cutting through an important coolant or electrical line and ruining a new freezer. We went with 2x4's all the way around to form the base, and then 1x6's around the sides and front to hide all of the screws, the 2x4 freezer joint and gain the all important approval of the wife! It was at this point that Jackie suggestion #1 made an appearance. The request - to raise the 1x6 boarder up above the 2x4's in order to also hide the weather stripping around the freezer lid. We made some measurements, went out to cut, and then had to make trip #2 to the store because the front 1x6 was about 1/2 inch short...

Back from shopping trip #2 (time on receipt – 3:33 pm) where we had to get a surprising number of items forgotten on trip 1 including, shims, a hole saw bit for the taps, more wood and glue, we were ready to cut. We really tried to follow the measure twice and cut once mantra, and ended up having to clamp various pieces of wood to the freezer in order to get the "correct" measurements. Attempt number two was a success, and after some tense moments of not trying to pre-drill through the 1x6 we had a completed collar. At this point it was time to put the new hole saw, and our measuring skills to the test, and cut the holes for the taps. Jackie suggestion #2 showed up at this point and we followed her tap placement instructions to a tee. After literally burning our way through 2 of the 4 holes we were forced to take a break to let the drill bit cool down. We finished up the next two and everything is ready to stain. On to shopping trip #3 because the stain we have at the house is not the right color. Before we left however we took the time to glue the hell out of the casters and get those puppies attached to the base of the freezer.

Back again! (time on receipt – 6:15 pm) We are now ready to sand and stain this bad boy a beautiful red oak per another wife suggestion. The color looks great after a second coat and the day is winding down. Time to clean up, drink some beer and get ready for day 2.

Pictures of the 2x4 and 1x6 collar, the finished stained product, and the casters. 

  

_______________________________________________________
"Do not cease to drink beer, to eat, to intoxicate thyself, to make love and to celebrate the good days" - Ancient Egyptian credo

The Beginning

 

For the past year and a half or two years I have been experimenting with home brewing and made up a few pretty darn good beers. The documentation is thin, but looking back I have made a brown ale, a pumpkin ale, a Christmas brew, a summer ale and a few other random concoctions which all turned out to be quite drinkable. I did however fail to write down anything on them, including how they tasted or smelled or even the alcohol content. With that, the former will be the last you hear about batches BK (before kegerator).

Over the past two weeks I have turned the switch and set myself up for some serious brewing. It all started with a simple Vienna style lager that I wanted to properly lager ferment in the fridge. So I removed a few shelves, adjusted some temperatures, and viola! I'm lager fermenting. Little did I realize that the freezer is also effected by this change in temperature and my wife was none to happy. The result, I was given an old dorm fridge and turned it into my own personal lager fridge. See a picture of this ridiculous contraption which is not allowed out of the basement below.

With this retrofit going so well my mind started to move into the kegerator realm, which is a place it moves to and from on a very frequent basis. When picking up supplies for the next batch of brew (oatmeal stout!!) we started talking to the owner about kegging beer. Seeing as how I have all the necessary equipment to do so, I was already planning on putting the lager into a keg, and the keg into my lager fridge. We were told however that one could fit upwards of 4 corney kegs into a fairly small chest freezer. When my mind moves into kegerator land it almost always ends up on converting a freezer into a kegerator, and my wife had always agreed that I could do that....in our next house. The news that you do not need a large freezer for 4 kegs however was new, and started the wheels spinning in such a way that we all knew where this would end up before we even left the store!

The revelation that I will soon have a kegerator worthy of holding 4 kegs of delicious homemade brew has prompted me to document my brewing online for the masses, or at least myself, to enjoy. I will start with the conversion of the freezer to a kegerator, then try to document the home brews batch by batch. Whenever my brother, the micro brewery aficionado comes to town we also frequent many of the local establishments, so I am sure some of those trips will be worthy of a posting.

A picture of the retrofitted lager fridge

____________________________________________________________

"Give a man a beer, and he wastes an hour, but teach a man how to brew, and he wastes a lifetime."